Victor Oladipo sees the East as wide open, Pacers ready to do something special

Victor Oladipo is making his media rounds lately and appeared on ESPN’s morning show Get Up! to talk about a variety of topics including being traded twice, about the state of the Eastern Conference after LeBron James decided to go to Los Angeles and about that missed goaltending call in the playoffs.

Michelle Beadle, one of the hosts of the show, wanted to know what players in the East felt like when James, who has dominated the conference, decided to go to a Western Conference team.

“When I first heard about it, I was a little upset,” said Oladipo. “I like playing against the best player in the world and competing against him and seeing where you’re at.”

Despite Oladipo’s love of the competition, he does realize that this an opportunity for the team to take the next step.

“At the end of the day though, let’s be realistic; it does kind of open up the East,” said Oladipo. “I did text my teammates to tell them … ‘It’s wide open now, so how we gonna act?’ So, we’ll see how we do next year.”

And later in the interview on the expectations for the team this year: “Within ourselves and within our locker room, we’re ready to do something big and special. That’s what we’re focused on. Taking it one day at a time and living in the moment and trying to do something special for the Indiana Pacers.”

At the beginning of the interview, Oladipo talked about what it felt like to be traded twice in consecutive summers.

“Getting traded twice in a year is tough,” said Oladipo. “Almost to the point where you start questioning what kind of basketball player you are. I was at that point. It was tough, but I kind of used that as motivation in my workouts and try to improve myself to try and get better to prove people wrong. And prove myself right.”

Oladipo said he was on a plane both times he got traded and didn’t find out until the plane landed.

“I remember those days and who I got traded for like it was yesterday,” said Oladipo. “You don’t forget them.”

Oladipo, who believes both teams won the deal in the OKC/Indiana deal, said that he doesn’t think the trade of Paul George will define his career anymore and that instead it’ll be about what he does from now on.

On the infamous missed goaltending call in Game 5 of the first round against the Cleveland Cavaliers:

“I’ll never get over that,” said Oladipo. “At the end of the day, if they call that goaltend, who knows what happens? I think we win that game honestly. It is what it is. I can’t really do anything about it now. Next year, I’m just going to make sure I dunk it.”